Saving WordPerfect Files Without Metadata

According to Wikipedia,
the word "metadata" comes from the Greek word "meta" and the Latin word
"data," so its literal meaning is "data about data." A library catalog
is considered metadata because it contains information about
publications. In recent years, the term has been used to describe
hidden data that is stored within a document. We frequently hear news
reports about how the discovery of metadata exposed information that
was meant to be kept secret.

This issue is particularly sticky for law offices. Legal information
is often confidential, and its inclusion within files could be
detrimental to court cases or contract negotiations. Attorneys state
that sending documents containing metadata can lead to the disclosure
of confidential client information and the breach of client/attorney
confidentiality. As a result, the potential for malpractice claims
increases. Given the strict confines of the client/attorney
relationship, law offices cannot afford to send a document outside the
firm without first cleaning up the metadata.

Fortunately, the issue of metadata is primarily a Microsoft® Word
problem. Word stores information about a document in a hidden area at
the end of the file. You can't access it, so you can't remove it.
Although there are macro routines that can scrub this invisible area,
they are not foolproof.

WordPerfect® handles metadata differently from Word. Features that
might store hidden or attached data are readily available, so
confidential or sensitive information can be removed from a file before
it is shared electronically. This is one of the many reasons that legal
professionals favor WordPerfect.

Where is metadata stored?
WordPerfect has several areas and features that can be used to store
information about a document. You can enable or disable each of these
options when you use the Save Without Metadata feature.

Undo/Redo history
As you use the Undo and Redo features, WordPerfect maintains a list of
your actions. This list allows you to undo or redo an action if it is
performed within a specific number of the most recent actions. The
specific number of actions that can be undone or redone is set in the
options for the Undo/Redo history. Choose Edit > Undo/Redo History to display the Undo/Redo History dialog box. Choose Options to display the Undo/Redo Options
dialog box (see Figure 1). You can either type a new number of history
items or use the arrows to increase or decrease the setting.

The number of undo/redo items can be set in the Undo/Redo Options dialog box.

Whether the Undo/Redo history is saved with a document depends on whether the Save Undo/Redo Items with document
check box is enabled. If the option is enabled, that information is
saved with the document, so whoever opens the document can access the
information. For example, if you are negotiating a settlement, you
would not want opposing counsel to know that you changed a figure from
$300,000 to $1,300,000. For confidential or sensitive documents, the
Save Undo/Redo Items with document check box should remain disabled so
that WordPerfect removes the Undo/Redo history when the document is
saved.

Reviewer's annotations
The Document Review feature is used to review a document and make
changes. These changes are then accepted or rejected by the author. If
you send the document to someone else without first accepting all of
the changes, the recipient will be able to see the proposed changes.

The main difference between the Document Review feature in
WordPerfect and the Track Changes feature in Word is that in a
WordPerfect document, you see the Review Document dialog box whenever
you open the document (see Figure 2), so you are less likely to forget
that you have unaccepted changes in the document. In Word, you can
simply hide the changes — Word never prompts you about them. You can
easily forget they are there. Furthermore, if you are working with a
document that someone else created, you won't know that the document
contains unaccepted changes.

The Review Document dialog box appears each time you open a document that contains unaccepted reviewer's annotations.

Comment information
Through the Comment feature, you can insert information into a document
that will neither be printed nor affect the pagination. The information
that you put in a comment is saved in the comment code, so it isn't
actually part of the body text. Typically, a comment contains the name
of the person who created it. In some cases, comments contain the date
and time of their creation.

If a user has entered their initials and selected a user color in
the User Information section of the Environment Settings dialog box,
their comment bubbles will appear in the user color and their initials
will appear in the comment bubble. These small cues help you quickly
identify who inserted the comment. You can quickly strip out the user
initials and user colors with the Comment Information option in the
Save Without Metadata dialog box. The comment text isn't touched and
all of the comment bubbles appear with the same – as a generic white
bubble.

Document summary data
When creating or saving a document in WordPerfect, you can save summary
information within the document. By default, the following information
may be present in the summary of a WordPerfect document (other fields
can be added and used as well):

Descriptive Name

Descriptive Type

Creation Date

Revision Date

Author

Typist

Subject

Account

Keywords

Abstract

Hidden Text
In WordPerfect documents, it is possible to assign a hidden attribute to text by selecting the text, choosing Format > Font, and then enabling the Hidden check box in the Appearance section). The display is toggled on and off with View > Hidden Text
so someone can easily turn on the display and view the information. If
the hidden text contains information that should not be distributed, it
should be removed before sending out the file.

Headers/Footers
Headers and footers in documents may contain identifying information,
such as the name of the person who last modified the document and the
date and time the changes were made. Although this information is
useful to you, it may not be appropriate to share with others.

Hyperlinks
WordPerfect documents may contain hyperlinks to other documents or Web
pages on an intranet or the Internet. Hyperlinks typically appear as
blue underlined text strings. The path and filename of the hyperlinked
document can be viewed by looking at the hyperlink's properties (see
Figure 3). If the recipients have access to the area in which the
hyperlinked document is stored, they will be able to access the files
that are hyperlinked.

The path and file name for a hyperlink can be viewed in the Hyperlink Properties dialog box.

OLE Object Information
OLE linked images and other objects may contain linking information,
such as the path to the linked image or object. This information can be
removed from the document by terminating the OLE link between the
object and the associated application. Keep in mind that removing the
link may mean that the image or object will no longer be editable from
within WordPerfect.

If an object is embedded within a document, the object still retains
its own properties, regardless of what is done to the document. These
properties include any information not visible in the OLE box window in
the document. In other words, if someone extracts an embedded object
and opens it in its native application, all of the information that is
saved with the object will be visible, including items that cannot be
seen in the WordPerfect OLE interface.

Routing Slip
Routing slips allow you to e-mail a document to multiple reviewers.
Each reviewer opens the attachment, makes changes, then closes the
document. The document is then sent to the next person on the Reviewers list. When the document has been edited by all of the reviewers, it is then sent back to you. See this tutorial for more information on creating routing slips in WordPerfect.

Using the Save Without Metadata Feature
In earlier versions of WordPerfect, the manual cleanup of metadata
required a series of steps. Now, you can use a single dialog box to
accomplish the same task. WordPerfect X3 introduces the Save Without
Metadata feature to ensure that you'll never get caught with
confidential or sensitive information in your documents. The new
feature makes it simple to remove all metadata from a document, without
having to purchase an additional utility or perform a series of manual
steps.

To save a WordPerfect document without metadata, choose File > Save Without Metadata. The Save Without Metadata dialog box appears (see Figure 4). WordPerfect automatically adds _mtd
to the end of the filename to identify that the file does not contain
metadata. If you change the filename, take care not to remove the _mtd. If necessary, click the browse button to move to the drive and folder where you want to save the document.

The new Save Without Metadata feature makes it a snap to remove metadata from a document.

If you enable the Keep Original Document Open check
box, both the original document and the metadata-free version remain
open. Otherwise, the original document closes, and the metadata-free
version remains open. Finally, specify which metadata elements to
remove from the document by enabling the appropriate check boxes in the
Select Metadata to Remove area, and click Save.